Braised Chicken with Vegetables: Easy One-Pan Dinner
Everyone knows how much effort it sometimes takes to cook dinner after a really hard day, when, as Sharik the dog from the old cartoon put it, your paws ache and your tail is falling off. That's when braised chicken with vegetables saves the day. A little chicken, a few vegetables you always have at home, and very little time and effort, and you've got a tasty dinner.
I've always envied people who can whip up something delicious from whatever is in the fridge, and, most importantly, do it fast. I'm a big fan of cooking that doesn't take long, and I'm always surprised to hear that some home cooks spend half the day making dinner.
To my mind, the most interesting dishes in terms of speed and simplicity are foods braised or stewed in their own juices. Take sauté (from the French sauter, “to jump”): foods braised or simmered in their own juices, often meat with vegetables, which form a thick sauce as they cook.
Or fricassée (from the French verb fricasser, “to fry, to stew”): a stew of white meat in a white sauce. Azu is a traditional Tatar dish made by frying meat with vegetables.
There's nothing complicated about it. All that matters is choosing an original recipe, for example, chicken with vegetables, prepping the ingredients, which takes very little time, and braising everything together. Braised chicken, for instance, is a guaranteed dinner win with very little hands-on work: about 15 minutes of prep and a couple of stirs, no harder than making braised potatoes with meat.
Ingredients
2 servings
- Chicken drumsticks 3-4
- Eggplant 1
- Carrots 2
- Potatoes 2
- Garlic 1-2 cloves
- Tomatoes 2-4
- Red bell pepper 2
- Salt, black pepper, sweet paprika, vegetable oil to taste
Step-by-step recipe
- Cook the dish in a deep sauté pan with a lid. Heat 3 tbsp of vegetable oil. Don't salt or pepper the chicken pieces yet. Just wash them and trim off anything unwanted, making sure no feathers are left. Brown the chicken pieces on all sides, lower the heat, cover the pan with the lid and let the meat braise. Let the chicken cook while you prepare the vegetables, about 10 minutes.
- Scald the tomatoes with boiling water, peel them and remove the seeds. Finely chop the tomato flesh with a knife.
- Wash the red bell pepper and remove the stem and seeds. Cut the pepper into large pieces.
- Peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes.
- Slice the carrots, just not too thin.
- Peel the garlic.
- Wash the eggplant and cut it into rounds or cubes. If the eggplant is large, you can first cut it in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.
- Add the eggplant, grated garlic and carrots to the chicken in the pan. By the way, you can also add an unpeeled garlic clove; the dish will only be better for it.
- Season with salt and pepper and pour in about 1 cup of hot water.
- Add 1 tsp of sweet paprika. Add the tomatoes and pepper. Stir everything and braise over low heat for 30 minutes. It's best to stir once or twice during this time.
- Chicken with vegetables is already a tasty dinner or breakfast, but if you add diced potatoes, it gets even better. After adding the diced potatoes, stir and braise for another 20 minutes. By then the potatoes will be fully cooked.
- The braised chicken and vegetable sauté is ready. Serve it on plates while it's hot.
| Yield: | 2 servings |
| Calories: | 95 |
| Prep time: | 20 mins |
| Cook time: | 40 mins |
| Total time: | 60 mins |
| Category: | Main Dishes |
| Cuisine: | European |
| Rating: |
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5
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